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Background: The tobacco whitefly, Bemisia tabaci Gennadius (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae), has developed a high degree of resistance to several chemical classes of insecticides throughout the world. To evaluate the resistance status in West Africa, eight insecticides from different chemical families were tested using the leaf-dip method on four field populations collected from cotton in Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso., Results: Some field populations showed a significant loss of susceptibility to pyrethroids such as deltamethrin [resistance ratio (RR) 3-5] and bifenthrin (RR 4-36), to organophosphates (OPs) such as dimethoate (RR 8-15) and chlorpyrifos (RR 5-7) and to neonicotinoids such as acetamiprid (RR 7-8) and thiamethoxam (RR 3-7). Bemisia tabaci was also resistant to pymetrozine (RR 3-18) and to endosulfan (RR 14-30)., Conclusion: The resistance of B. tabaci to pyrethroids and OPs is certainly due to their systematic use in cotton treatments for more than 30 years. Acetamiprid has been recently introduced for the control of whiteflies. Unfortunately, B. tabaci populations from Burkina Faso seem to be already resistant. Because cross-resistance between these compounds has never been observed elsewhere, resistance to neonicotinoids could be due to the presence of an invasive B. tabaci biotype recently detected in the region., (Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry.)